February 15, 2012, Bob Brinker Marketimer, Land of Critical Mass, ONLY Review

February 15, 2012.............................................................(comments welcome)

Thanks to several comments sent to the blog this morning (HERE), this subject was brought to my attention.

If you take a look at Bobbrinker.com, Bob Brinker's Marketimer website, you will see the following under "Marketimer Reviews." It is the ONLY REVIEW that Bob Brinker offers for his newsletter and it is very deceptive:

 Hulbert Financial Digest named Bob Brinker's Marketimer © to its 2012 Honor Roll of Investment Letters. Marketimer © has earned an annual total return of 9.7% for the 20-year period through November 30, 2011. This compares with the Wilshire 5000 Total Stock Market Index annual total return of 8.5% for the same 20-year period.

 That paragraph is written very cleverly. Every word is true, but it causes the reader to believe the lie that Brinker was "awarded" a place on Hulbert Financial Digest "Honor Roll"  because of his 20-year returns. That is false. Hulbert does not choose Honor Roll newsletters based on their return -- as Mark Hulbert explained in his December 2011 newsletter.  Mark chooses his own "categories" and "criteria" -- all unnamed of course, in order to pick who will get on his "Honor Roll List."

December 2011 HFD, Mark Hulbert wrote:    "Of the nine letters on last year’s Honor Roll, just six made it on to this year’s. It’s not that the remaining three did anything terrible over the last 12 months to cause them to come off this list. They continue to have excellent long-term returns. They instead were victims in part of my re-categorizing the last dozen years into different “up” and “down” periods, which I did in order to recognize the market’s decline that began this past spring as a separate “down” period....

...Of the nine letters on last year’s Honor Roll, just six made it on to this year’s. It’s not that the remaining three did anything terrible over the last 12 months to cause them to come off this list. They continue to have excellent long-term returns. They instead were victims in part of my re-categorizing the last dozen years into different “up” and “down” periods, which I did in order to recognize the market’s decline that began this past spring as a separate “down” period....

...HFD has performance data extending back to August 31, 1998 (the beginning date for being eligible for this year’s Honor Roll). On those pages, you’ll find no fewer than 22 additional services whose overall returns are just as good, or better, than those that did make the Honor Roll—but which nevertheless did not meet the criteria for making it onto the Honor Roll."

If you would like to know about Mark's categories, criteria and "up and down periods," so would I -- he doesn't explain them. .And he seems oblivious to the fact that Brinker has been a buy-and-holder throughout all of the "up and down" periods -- except for a partial sell signal between January 2000 and March 2003.

Now regarding Bob Brinker's 20-year return. Yes, it is true that according to Mark Hulbert,  he beat the Wilshire 5000 Total Return by 1.3% over 20 years.  But remember that Hulbert has given Bob Brinker's Marketimer several mulligans on blundered trades that used model portfolio cash reserves. So this was no special "award" as one blog reader was led to believe. It was the usual list that Mark puts in his newsletters. However, even that list is deceptive because he rearranged the columns so the "risk-adjusted returns" are shown first and the real returns in the interior -- that is a fairly recent development.

If you  look at HFD's 10-year top-7 returns, Bob Brinker's Marketimer isn't there, and he's not on the 5-year list either.




What about the 1-year returns? Here they are directly from Bob Brinker.com:

 1 year ended 12-31-2011 for all Model Portfolios:
Portfolio I: (3%)
Portfolio II: (3%)
Portfolio III: 1% (balanced portfolio of equity and fixed-income securities)
Active/Passive: (2%)
MSCI Broad Market Index: 1% (VTSMX)

 You can read a more in depth article I wrote about Mark Hulbert and Bob Brinker's relationship HERE.

(By the way, based on the dishonest games Mark Hulbert plays with both Bob Brinker's newsletters, I do NOT recommend Hulbert Financial Digest. I subscribe to it only so that I can KNOW and  post facts here.) 

Our straight-talking friend, TFB, wrote this:

 Hulbert is a bullsxxx, penny-ante two bit Huckster who would pimp his mother for a quarter like Brinker. He lost all credibility years ago when he research methodology was examined by some graduate students and only the ignorant would waste time with his fonts of disingenuousness. The folks who pay attention to Hulbert are the same types who use Morningstar’s star system to buy mutual funds.

His clap-trap B.S. cannot hold up to statistical scrutiny and he is the butt of jokes at ISU Mathematical Department(as are others, particularly some popular political pollsters).

You cannot believe a single thing that slime ball says any more than you can trust Bob(how can I fool them today)Brinker. The two are cut from the same cloth. Unlike HoneyBee I think any good Brinker ever did by promoting low cost mutual funds was undone by his perpetuating the fraud known as market timing.

tfb

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